The purpose of the study is to identify those educational and social processes in multiethnic elementary schools which are associated with positive educational and mental health outcomes as measured by academic achievement; self concept; anxiety; locus of control; educational and occupational expectations; attitudes toward school; stereotyping of other ethnic groups; positive identity with own ethnic group; and cross-ethnic and inter-ethnic sociometric choices. Using a theoretical model based on the theory of equal status contacts, systematic case studies are being conducted to compare the learnig environments of 13 elementary schools in California on which data were collected during l973-74. Public schools presentlyy reproduce in microcosm the unequal status relationships among students, staff, and parents of differing ethnic groups which characterize the relationships among adults of differing ethnic groups in the macrocosm of the larger society. We theorize that these unequal status relationships replicated in the school socialize children of differing ethnic origins for unequal adult statuses, and are correlated with observed unequal educational and mental health outcomes. We have identified ten institutional processes which we hypothesize are central to produucing unequal status: norm-refernced testing grouping based on academic achievement; individual competition; monocultural curriculum; anglo parentaa dominance in decision making; anglo dominated staff; unequal transportation burden; unequal resource allocation; inequalities in normative structure; inequalites in extracurricular participation. We hypothesize that schools which equalize the ten processes for ethnic groups will produce significantlyy more positive educational and mental health outcomes.